Municipal leaders across the province have been sounding off on the recently-revealed provincial 2022-2023 budget.

A big point of pride for the UCP government is the fact that this is the first balanced budget in seven years, with an expected $500-million surplus.

For Okotoks mayor Tanya Thorn, it's quite an accomplishment, but one that leans too heavily on oil and gas revenue.

"It's a great headline that it's balanced, but I think we've been really lucky as the Province of Alberta that we've seen great prosperity out of oil and gas. Oil and gas is a key industry in our economy, absolutely, and it's nice to see them rebounding, but I think my biggest concern with it is that we haven't learned from mistakes of the past and we're balancing the budget on oil and gas. We're not looking at changing how we look at revenue, how we manage our oil and gas revenues, putting that aside and saving for that rainy day. Instead, it's going into general operating, and I have concerns about that."

One interesting note for municipalities is the switch from Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) funding to the Local Government Fiscal Framework (LGFF) set for 2024 and 2025.

Thorn welcomes the change in principle but says there are also a lot of lingering questions.

"It's something municipalities have been asking for, to have a long-term sustainable funding formula. With MSI, it changes every year, we never know what it's going to be until the budget comes out. The goal with LGFF is that there'll be a formula and it'll be consistent. But we haven't done any of the work yet in terms of what it looks like, and they pushed the date to 2024 last year. And that just creates uncertainty for municipalities, and obviously, there's going to be a provincial election now before then."

Locally speaking, Thorn is concerned about funding for a few local projects.

The 1.7 per cent increase in education funding hasn't left her feeling optimistic about the potential modernization of Good Shepherd School, or the building of a new high school for the Foothills School Division, which the town has allocated land for.

She's also apprehensive about a potential end to the town's water issues.

"A big key one for our council is grant funding for the water pipeline. We're not seeing them increase the amount of money going into water grants, which, from my perspective, is disappointing. They've indicated that the funding that is available this year is only for people with applications in. Thankfully Okotoks has an application in the queue, so we are still hopeful that ours will percolate to the top."